Liens culturels entre la Valachie et le Proche-Orient
NEW DATA ON THE EARLY ARABIC PRINTING IN THE LEVANT AND ITS CONNECTIONS TO THE ROMANIAN PRESSES IOANA FEODOROV (Institute for South-East European Studies, Bucharest)
Three topics are discussed in this article, all connected to the printing work done by Sylvester, the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch (1724-1766), who travelled to Moldavia and Wallachia and succeeded in obtaining liturgical and polemical books necessary to the Arab Christians of Ottoman Syria and neighbouring provinces: first, the letters of Mūsā Ṭrābulsī, the Patriarch’s secretary, which enclose information on the Arabic printing activities of Iași and Bucharest; second, the description of a rare copy of a Psalter printed in Beirut in 1752, recently located in Uppsala; and third, information on an unknown Arabic Akathist, printed in a yet unidentified press, but possibly by Patriarch Sylvester’s apprentices. Keywords: Early Arabic printing, Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch, Athanasius Dabbās, Antim the Iberian, Arabic Psalter, Arabic Akathist, Beirut press.
The history of Arabic printing in the East began with the joint work of Antim the Iberian, the scholar, expert printer, and future Metropolitan of Ungrowallachia1, and Athanasius Dabbās, the Metropolitan of Aleppo, in between two terms as Patriarch of the Antiochian Church2. Two books in Arabic and Greek were printed in 1701 (at Snagov)3 and 1702 (at Bucharest)4 at the request of Dabbās, who 1
‘The Georgian’, born Andrei, lived c. 1650–1716. A skilled master of engraving, known as ‘Father Antim the Typographer’, Antim was, first, the abbot of Snagov Monastery, near Bucharest. He headed the printing house there between 1696 and 1705, when he left for Râmnic, following his election as a Bishop. His book production amounts to 59 books supervised by him, whereas 38 were printed by himself: 22 in Romanian (of which four were his own works), 27 in Greek (and Romanian), eight in Slavonic (and Romanian), and two in Greek and Arabic. See Ioana Feodorov, “Beginnings of Arabic Printing in Ottoman Syria (1706–1711). The Romanians’ Part in Athanasius Dabbās’s Achievements”, ARAM, Oxford, 25, nr. 1–2 (2013), 2016, especially p. 239–242. 2 Patriarch Athanasius III Dabbās, 1686–1694, 1720–1724. 3 Book of the Divine Liturgies (Liturgikon, Kitāb al-qudusāt at-talāta al-’ilāhiyya), 252 p. For this and the following titles see Ioana Feodorov, “Texte arabe creștine tipărite cu ajutor din Țările Române în secolul al XVIII-lea – Repertoriu comentat / Christian Arabic Texts Printed with Help from the Romanian Principalities in the 18th Century – An Annotated Record”, Istros (Brăila), XX, 2014, p. 651–688 (in Romanian), p. 689–729 (in English); ead., “Livres arabes chrétiens imprimés par l’aide des Principautés Roumaines au début du XVIIIe siècle. Répertoire commenté”, Chronos. Revue d’Histoire de l’Université de Balamand, 34, 2016, p. 7–49. 4 Book of Hours (Horologion, Kitāb al-’Urūlūğiyūn), 731 p. Rev. Études Sud-Est Europ., LVI, 1–4, p. 197–233, Bucarest, 2018
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wished to provide the Arabic-speaking clergy with service books in the vernacular, based on versions that had been translated and revised by great Arab Christian scholars of old. Having received, upon his departure for Aleppo in 1705, printing tools, matrices, and probably the Arabic types created by Antim the Iberian, Dabbās continued his work in a printing press that he installed at the Metropolitan residence of the city.5 Four decades later, under the care of Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch, who travelled to the Romanian Principalities in 1730–1748, Christian Arabic books were printed here again. Born in Cyprus around 1680 of Greek parents (Giorgios and Fotini6), Sylvester was the nephew of Patriarch Athanasius III Dabbās, on his sister’s side. 7 He had grown up under the care of Athanasius, who ordained him deacon, priest, then made him protosyncellos of the Patriarchate of the Antiochian Church. He joined the monastic order at Mount Athos, where he learned the art of Byzantinestyle icon painting. Having become archdeacon, he accompanied Dabbās on several journeys in the Levantine eparchies and, at least once, in Wallachia. Owing to his heritage and his monastic education, Sylvester possessed a deep knowledge of Byzantine culture. He was the first of a series of native speakers of Greek among the Patriarchs of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, which continued uninterrupted until 1899. Aged 28, Sylvester was designated a successor by Athanasius III, while he was nearing death. Sylvester was summoned from Mount Athos8 to Damascus, elected by the local community, and confirmed by a Synod called at Constantinople in July 1724. This was the year of the schism that divided the Church of Antioch: Cyril VI was the choice of a community, composed during the last half-century, which favoured the Union with Rome. Among Sylvester’s 5
For the Arabic books printed at the Aleppo press see I. Feodorov, “Livres arabes chrétiens...”, p. 12
sqq. 6
Sylvester mentions them by these names in an Arabic note written on the icon that he gave to the St Spyridon Monastery in Bucharest when it was made a metokion of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. According to Le Quien (Oriens Christianus, II, Paris, 1740, p. 776), Sylvester’s father was a Greek Orthodox and his mother a Maronite. However, other historians disagree: see Clement Karnapas, “O Patriarchis Antiocheias Silvestros O Kyprios, 1724–1766”, Nea Sion (Jerusalem), 2, 1905, p. 193–194. 7 On his life and works see Nea Sion, 1, 1905, p. 191–206, 525–541; 3, 1906, p. 28–43, 364–389, 471–485, 602–617; 4, 1906, p. 49–67, 290–313, 429–444, 498–514; 5, 1907, p. 54–69, 361–378, 638–652, 846–867; A. K. Hypsilantis, Ta meta tin Alosin (1453–1789) ek cheirografou anekdotou tis Ieras Monis tou Sina, Constantinople, 1870, p. 326; Assad Rustum, Kanīsat madīnat Allāh ’Anṭākiya al-‘Uẓmā, Beirut, 1928, t. III, p. 142. Among the more recent sources, see Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Kypriaki Logiosny, 1571–1878: Prosopografiki theorisi, Lefkosia, 2002, p. 252–254; B. Nassour, Silvestros: Patriarchis Antiocheias (1724–1766) kata tis Ellinikes kai Aravikes piges, Tessaloniki, 1992 (unpublished Ph D thesis). Hasan Çolak dedicated a chapter to Patriarch Sylvester in his book The Orthodox Church in the Early Modern Middle East: Relations Between the Ottoman Central Administration and the Patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, Ankara, 2015. 8 Or perhaps from Constantinople, according to Le Quien, loc. cit.
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supporters were Patriarch Hrisantos of Jerusalem, Prince Nicolae Mavrocordat9, who had also been acquainted with Patriarch Athanasius III, and the great drogman Grigore Ghica (1698–1741)10. Ghica had enough influence with the Ecumenical Patriarchate to push for the election of a particular Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, this time also based on the special relationship that the candidate’s predecessor and spiritual teacher, Athanasius III Dabbās, had enjoyed with Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu and the high clergy of Wallachia. Sylvester remained on the See from October 1724 to his death, on 13 March 1766, aged 70. The inscription on his tomb indicates the duration of his mission: 41 years, 5 months, and 26 days11. To get help for the Church that he had been called to lead, which was in a poor state after two centuries of Ottoman rule over Syria, Sylvester turned to the Princes Ioan and Constantin Mavrocordat12. Reaching Moldavia in the spring of 1730, he was hosted at the St Sabbas Monastery in Iași, same as Patriarch Macarius III Ibn al-Zaʻīm almost eighty years before. In 1745–1747 he succeeded in printing at this monastery several books in Arabic, with Arabic types: a new edition of the Arabic and Greek Book of the Divine Liturgies of Snagov (1701); Patriarch Nektarius of Jerusalem, Qaā al-aqq wa-naql a-idq (The Rule of Justice and the Diffusion of Truth, sometimes translated as The Arbiter of Truth and Justice13), in the same volume with the book of Eustratios Argentis Risla muhtaara fī r-radd ‘al ‘adam ġala Bbwt Rūmiya (Dispute on the Pope’s Infallibility), a translation of Peri tis psevdhous apsevdhias tou Papa Romis14; Al-ʻAšā ar-Rabbānī 9
Nicolae Mavrocordat (b. 3 May 1680, Constantinople – d. 3 September 1730, Bucharest), Prince of Moldavia: 17 November 1709 – November 1710, and 1711 – 5 January 1716, then Prince of Wallachia: 21 January 1716 – 25 November 1716, and March 1719 – 3 September 1730. 10 He was a Prince of Wallachia (1728-1735, intermittently) and Moldavia (1735-1741). Son of Matei Ghica with one of Alexandru Mavrocordat’s daughters, Grigore was proficient in several languages and a talented writer. He was a great drogman at the Sultan’s court for eleven years, between 1717 and 1728. Accused of treason, he was executed by the Ottomans. See Epaminonda I. Stamatiade, Biografiile marilor dragomani (interpreți) greci din Imperiul Otoman, translation from Greek by Constantin Erbiceanu, Cluj-Napoca, 2016, p. 84–86. 11 He was buried in the Church of the St Archangel Michael in Damascus; see Nea Sion, 5, 1907, p. 864. 12 Ioan N. Mavrocordat, Prince of Moldavia (June 1743 – May 1747); his brother, Constantin Mavrocordat, Prince of Wallachia (September 1730 – October 1730; October 1731 – April 1733; November 1735 – September 1741; July 1744 – April 1748) and of Moldavia (April 1733 – November 1735; September 1741 – June 1743; April 1748 – August 1749). 13 The Latin version, “De Artibus quibus missionari latini, praecipue in Terra Sancta degentes, ad subvertendam Graecorum fidem utuntur, et de quamplurimus Ecclesiae Romanae erroribus et corruptelis libri tres”, in 27 chapters, had been published in 1729 in London; see Georg Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, Città del Vaticano (henceforth GCAL), III: 144–145; Joseph Nasrallah and Rachid Haddad, Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans l’Église melchite du Vème au XXème siècle (henceforth HMLEM), IV/2, Louvain – Paris, 1989, p. 97; Rachid Haddad, „La Correspondance de Ṭrābulsī, secrétaire du Patriarche d’Antioche Sylvestre de Chypre, in Mémorial Monseigneur Joseph Nasrallah, éd. Pierre Canivet and Jean-Paul Rey-Coquais, Damascus, 2006, p. 281, n. 26; I. Feodorov, Tipar pentru creștinii arabi. Antim Ivireanul, Atanasie Dabbās și Silvestru al Antiohiei, Istros, Brăila, 2016, p. 248. 14 The Arabic version was achieved in 1740 by the priest Mas‘ad Našū of Damascus, while residing in Cairo.
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(The Lord’s Supper), a translation of Sintagma kata azymon by Eustratios Argentis; Amāl al-mutamiayn al-kanīsiyayn al-munaqidayn fī-l-Qusanīniyya bi-šan ẓuhūr al-kāūlika bayna ufūf al-masīiyyīn al-anākiyyīn (The Resolutions of the Synods convened at Constantinople pertaining to the appearance of Catholics among the Antiochian Christians), i.e., the Holy Synods of 1723 and 1727, convened by Patriarchs Jeremiah III and Paisios, respectively15. As for the texts that were printed by request of Patriarch Sylvester in other languages than Arabic, an Act of Absolution with Romanian text was printed in 1745, as a leaflet, while in 1748 several Greek antimensions were printed and were consecrated by the Patriarch.16 Patriarch Sylvester received in 1746, as a metokion of the Greek-Orthodox Church of Antioch, the Monastery of St Spyridon in Bucharest with all its possessions (buildings, lands, and orchards). He resumed here the activity that he had carried out in Iași, cutting punches for Arabic types, helped by the apprentices of the newly-formed monastic community. The Patriarch remained in Bucharest until 1748, as long as the renovation works took place on the church, the kelias, and the other buildings17. Concerning the goals of Patriarch Sylvester’s travels to the Romanian Principalities we have information from that period, both from Romanian manuscript and printed sources and from an unedited Arabic one: letters of the Patriarch’s secretary, Deacon Mūsā Ṭrābulsī. The Patriarchal Library of the Greek-Orthodox Church of Antioch in Damascus once held a file, registered as Doc. Arabe nr. 71, which enclosed letters concerning Patriarch Sylvester’s travels to the Romanian Principalities18. Although in 1860 the Library went through a terrible fire, this file survived19. Out of the Patriarch’s correspondence, Mūsā Ṭrābulsī selected some letters that were copied, by him and by others, becoming the first section (f. 4r– 52r) of a miscellany, Ms. nr. 9/22, preserved today in the library of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in Ḥoms. The manuscript comprises several 15
Like the previously mentioned book, this one is presumed by sources a century old to have been printed in Iași, but this information is now under scrutiny. 16 In Romanian workshops the printing of antimensions was a special activity. 17 The 18th century church was demolished on 27 August 1987 to make room for a new boulevard, planned by the Communist authorities. A new church was built in 1992–1997 on the same spot (today, at No. 5–7, Bd. Națiunile Unite), following the same plan and old pictures, reusing some architectural elements of the demolished church, preserved in a monastery near Bucharest: the front door stone-frame, window-frames, part of the iconostasis, and the original stone inscription (Rom. pisanie) in Greek and Arabic, placed in 1748, when the church was consecrated by Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch. 18 This file was first mentioned by Athanasius Papadopoulos-Kerameus, who commented the contents of a letter dated 10 February 1739, addressed by Patriarch Sylvester to the Stolnic Mihai Roset of Wallachia; see A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Ierosolymitikī vivliothīkī, Sankt-Peterburg, t. IV, 1899, p. 203–218. 19 In the last century two Romanians saw it, without being able to read the Arabic text: the diplomat Marcu Beza and the historian Virgil Cândea.
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other Arabic texts on various topics, some Christian, and some Islamic20. The manuscript was surveyed in 1968 by Rachid Haddad, who published a commentary on this section in 2006, in a volume dedicated to Mgr. Joseph Nasrallah21. Haddad organized the letters in sections, according to the sender22. He principally followed Mūsā Ṭrābulsī’s entourage and connections, and he mentioned many correspondents and events in Damascus, Tripoli, and Acre (Ar. ʻAkkā). The manuscript encloses a lot of information on the activity of Patriarch Sylvester of Antioch in the Romanian Principalities, and especially on his interest in Arabic printing, which is the focus of my comments henceforth. I acquired earlier this year a digital copy of this section of Ms. nr. 9/22 (97 pages – high-quality scans), and I am therefore able now to comment on the content of the letters based on their original Arabic version. Mūsā Nawfal Ṭrābulsī (“the Tripolitan”) was a Deacon of the Greek-Orthodox Church of Antioch and patriarchal secretary in Damascus. His most important correspondent was Yūsef Mark, born in Tripoli too (d. around 1773), a protosingelos of the Church of Antioch, apprentice and spiritual son of Patriarch Sylvester, whose rejection of the Catholics’ proselyte works he embraced23. Among others, he wrote an epistle against the Pope’s primacy, Collection of Chapters on the Battle against Madness with the Help of Light24. Mūsā wished to keep a copy of the letters that were interesting to him for their literary style and the connections that they reflected with the high clergy, as well as with his closest friends, Syrian scholars who mastered elaborate writing skills, in rhymed and rhythmic prose, as the epistolary style of the epoch required. One letter from Yūsef Mark to Mūsā dated 21 August 1737 starts with two stanzas about friendship, while another, of 29 June 1740, begins with the verse: Šifā al-qulūb / liqā al-maḥbūb (“Your heart is healed / when you meet your friend”). Another purpose was also considered in copying the letters: both Yūsef and Mūsā taught Classical Arabic to children born in Greek-Orthodox families. Yūsef first taught in Lādikiyya, in 1730–1740, to support his family. After he was ordained a priest and moved to Tripoli, he wrote to Mūsā in 1742 that he was teaching Arabic to some Christian children at the Metropolitan residence, watched 20
See the description in Philexinos Yuhanon Dolabani, René Lavenant, Sebastian Brock, and Samir Khalil Samir (eds), “Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Patriarcat Syrien Orthodoxe à Homs (auj. à Damas)”, Parole de l’Orient, 19, 1994, p. 597. 21 The above-mentioned “La Correspondance de Ṭrābulsī, secrétaire du patriarche d’Antioche Sylvestre de Chypre”, in Mémorial Monseigneur Joseph Nasrallah, Damascus, 2006, p. 257–288. Haddad presented some of the information provided in this correspondence in volume IV.2 of Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans L’Église melchite du Vème au XXème siècle (HMLEM), to which he substantially contributed. 22 He referred to page numbers in a different system than the actual numbering of the manuscript. 23 Nasrallah – Haddad, HMLEM, IV.2, p. 216. 24 GCAL, III, 1949, p. 148; Nasrallah – Haddad, op. cit., p. 216–217.
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over by Patriarch Sylvester, who took care of his salary, from Metropolitan funds. He reports in a letter sent from Bucharest in 1747: “His Holiness [...] entrusted Mark with four Wallachian children to whom he is teaching the Arabic grammar Al-’Ağurrūmīya.” Until Yūsef arrived, Mūsā’s son Buṭros had been responsible for their education. Teaching Greek and Arabic is a recurrent topic in the letters copied under Mūsā’s supervision. The Antiochian hierarchs, as well as the ones of Wallachia, wished that young people learn foreign languages that would be useful to them in their coming days as servants of the Church. As part of their Arabic learning, children were required to copy simple texts. This is probably the reason why sometimes the writing is shaky, uncertain or faulty. On fol. 8v–9v, e.g., a letter of December 1743 is copied, uncompleted, with two blank pages at the end. This is a letter from Damascus, sent by Yūsef Mark to Mūsā Ṭrābulsī, to let him know that Patriarch Sylvester had left for Moldavia, where the weather is too cold for him to accompany His Holiness, much to Yūsef’s regret. A section of a letter dated 29 July 1748 seems to have been copied by a beginner in Arabic writing, who left an entire phrase out, at the end, and copied it clumsily in the margin. Another of Yūsef’s letters to Mūsā, at the beginning of October 1748, is copied unevenly, most likely by a pupil. Copied by five different hands, the correspondence comprises letters between 1732 and 1787, thus going beyond Patriarch Sylvester’s pastoral years. Yūsef Mark’s letters are 31 all in all, most of them addressed to Mūsā Ṭrābulsī, and many from Bucharest. The letters exchanged by Yūsef Mark and Mūsā Ṭrābulsī reflect the high esteem that Patriarch Sylvester enjoyed in Romanian lands and his efforts to obtain the printing of Christian books in Arabic. While in Iași and Bucharest he was often visited by dignitaries, men and women, who came to ask for his blessing and prayers. The Princes showed him deep respect and affection. On Sundays and feast days they invited him to serve the Divine Liturgy wherever they were – at Court or travelling. Early in 1747, not long since Patriarch Sylvester’s printing work started at the Monastery of St Sabbas in Iași, it ceased for good. The only possible explanation, which is suggested in some letters of Ms. no. 9/22, is that the Arabic types used there were completely worn out after printing several books in 1,000 copies, as mentioned in the forewords. The Patriarch must have learned at the time that Neofit Criteanul (or Cretanul, i.e., “of Crete”), the Metropolitan of Ungrowallachia, had endowed the printing press of the St Sabbas Monastery in Bucharest “with 180 new types, two presses, six ballots of paper, and other implements.”25 Yūsef reached Bucharest in 1747, with some delay, and he stayed there until 1750, i.e., for nearly three years. He reports26 that upon his arrival he found 25 Tit Simedrea, “Tiparul bucureștean de carte bisericească în anii 1740–1750”, Biserica Ortodoxă Română, LXXXII, 1965, nr. 9–10, p. 860. 26 Letter to Mūsā, dated 21 November 1747 (fol. 21r).
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Patriarch Sylvester at the St Spyridon Monastery, occupied in making Arabic types (Fig. 1). The Prince of Wallachia (Constantin Mavrocordat) had given this monastery to the Church of Antioch as a metokion: in Iași, the Syrian printer Ğirğīs Abū Šaʻr, who had been well paid both by the Patriarch and by his Highness the Prince (Ioan Mavrocordat), had started casting lead types for a new Arabic set, but the types that he made were larger than the “old ones” (probably brought by Sylvester when he arrived in Moldavia). We infer from his report that the Arabic types used in Iași were not the work of this Ğirğīs Abū Šaʻr, but that he had been hired to make a new set of types to replace the old one, which was worn out. The Patriarch was not satisfied with these new types, continues Yūsef, so that in October 1746 he left to look for Arabic types in Constantinople. There, Ibrahim Müteferrika had printed since 1729, in Turkish, with Arabic types, scientific books on geography, language, and state policy27. By 1743 he had printed seven titles, in 500 to 1,000 copies each. In 1743 he retired from the workshop because of his poor health28, but the printing activity there did not stop at once. Patriarch Sylvester thought that maybe he could find a new set of Arabic types in Constantinople. It is not unlikely that even the first Arabic types had been obtained from the Ottoman capital29. Once acquired, the types would have been taken to Syria, away from the centre of the Sultan’s authority and the danger of a conspiracy allegation. A century before, Patriarch Cyril Lukaris’s interest in the books printed in the West and the brief activity of the Greek printing press of Nicodemus Metaxas in Constantinople may have had a negative impact on the opinion of the Sublime Porte on importing the printing technology to the Empire30. In January 1628, after this episode was over, the French ambassador to the Porte wrote: 27
A Hungarian born in the Transylvanian city of Cluj (Romania), he was taken prisoner by the Ottoman army and, brought to Constantinople, he converted to Islam and worked for the Ottoman Court (gaining the name müteferrika, Tk. for „messenger”, „envoy”). He resolutely promoted book-printing, and finally obtained in 1729 a firman from the Sultan that allowed him to print in Turkish anything but religious texts. Some Latin-script words and some Persian text appeared in two of the books that he printed in his Dār ül-Ṭibāʻat al-Maʻmūre, while all the rest were printed in Ottoman Turkish, in Arabic types. For details on his life, activity, and context, see Michael W. Albin, “Early Arabic Printing: A Catalogue of Attitudes”, Manuscripts of the Middle East, 5, 1990–1991, p. 114–115; Vefa Erginbaș, “Enlightenment in the Ottoman Context: Ibrahim Müteferrika and His Intellectual Landscape”, in Geoffrey Roper (ed.), Historical Aspects of Printing and Publishing in Languages of the Middle East, Papers from the Third Symposium on the History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East, University of Leipzig, September 2008, Leiden – Boston, 2014, p. 53–100; I. Feodorov, “Beginnings of Arabic Printing in Ottoman Syria (1706–1711)”, p. 233–234 (with suggestions for other readings); and the recent book by Orlin Sabev, Waiting for Müteferrika: Glimpses of Ottoman Print Culture, Boston, 2018. 28 He died two years later, in 1745, and was buried in the Galata cemetery. 29 There is no similarity, as far as I could ascertain, between the Müteferrika and the Iaşi type-faces. We still don’t know where Patriarch Sylvester obtained the first set of Arabic types used in Iași. 30 Lukaris intended to help educate the Levantine clergy, who did not have a good mastery of Greek any more. He had visited printing presses in Italy and L’viv. He received Greek books from England and the sections of the Arabic Bible printed by Erpenius in Holland (cf. Gerald Duverdier, “Livres pour le Liban. Défense de l’orthodoxie et lutte des influences”, in Camille Aboussouan (gen. ed.), Le livre et le
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“Je me suis résolu de n’être pas seulement sur la défensive; mais de faire jouer quelque ressort, pour leur donner des affaires sur le sujet de l’imprimerie comme une nouveauté dangereuse dans cet État.”31 Since Arabic books, both those imported and those printed in Istanbul, had brought enmity and conflict between the various Christian communities, the conclusion of the Ottoman authorities was that Arabic book-printing inflamed the society. A century later, the issue had been resolved and Ibrahim Müteferrika’s printing press functioned, having become the first deposit of Arabic types, cast in Istanbul proper, but used for a limited range of books. Before leaving Bucharest, Patriarch Sylvester entrusted the management of the emerging printing press of St Spyridon Monastery to Yūsef Mark. Yūsef informed Mūsā in several letters of 1748 that the Patriarch had finished his affairs in “these countries” (i.e., the Romanian Principalities) and that his lordship Grigore Bey would see him upon his departure the third day after the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God (i.e., on August 18)32. Later33 he wrote to him that he continued to live at the St Spyridon Monastery, where the hegumen was Deacon Theophanes, who had been ordained a priest, and the other brothers living there were the hieromonk Mīhā’īl of Kūrat ad-Dahab (near Tripoli, Lebanon), Deacon Parthenios of Adana (Turkey), a Romanian servant, and Kir Macarius, Bishop of Ahizka (Georgia)34. Yūsef was preparing to cast the Arabic types, so that the press would have been ready to work after the coming Easter; he was doing his best so that the press would turn out as good as possible, hoping that it would be installed in a safe place, where it would work undisturbed (f. 20r–v). Therefore, the task that Yūsef Mark had received from Patriarch Sylvester was to learn as much as he could from the printers of Bucharest, to be able afterward to install in Syria an Arabic press, such as the one founded by Patriarch Athanasius III in Aleppo. An additional point in support of this premise is the presence at St Spyridon Monastery Liban jusqu’à 1900, UNESCO – AGECOOP, Paris, 1982, p. 266). He helped the monk Nicodemus Metaxas open a Greek press in Constantinople, but the Catholics and the Jesuit missionaries complained about this to the Ottoman authorities, through the ambassadors of France and Austria, accusing him of conspiring against the Sultan. Lukaris was assassinated in 1638, by order of Murat IV. The Greek press was closed down, but Metaxas escaped to Kefalonia and resumed his printing work. See Letterio Augliera, Libri, politica, religione nel Levante del Seicento. La tipografia di Nicodemo Metaxas, primo editore di testi greci nell’Oriente ortodosso, Venice, 1996, especially p. 237–240 (an inventory of the books that Metaxas printed, with illustrations). 31 BnF Paris, Mss. Fr. 16150, letter of 27 Jan. 1628, cf. Josée Balagna, L’Imprimerie arabe en Occident, Paris, 1984, p. 64. 32 This information is presented in a fragment of a letter dated 29 July 1748 (fol. 20r). 33 In the beginning of October 1748 (fol. 38r–v). 34 Thus, around 1747–1748 the Georgian Bishop of Ahizka, Macarius, lived in the Antiochian community settled at the St Spyridon Monastery of Bucharest. The See of Ahizka was one of the seventeen Georgian Sees under the authority of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. This city, called in Turkish Akișka, is on the road linking Tbilisi to Batumi, 15 km from the present-day border between Turkey and Georgia. See R. Haddad, “La Correspondance”, p. 276, n. 20; Nasrallah – Haddad, op. cit., p. 26 (where the city is not identified).
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of hieromonk Mīhā’īl of Kūrat ad-Dahab, who had been a young apprentice in Dabbās’s printing press. There is a suggestion in some letters that Patriarch Sylvester strongly insisted on his return to Bucharest, where he had worked in Antim the Iberian’s workshop. The letters sent in 1732–1777 by Sophronius of Kilis (al-Kilislī, c. 1700– 1780) to several correspondents, including Patriarch Sylvester and Mūsā Ṭrābulsī (whom he calls “his spiritual son”), are a useful source not only for the topic that I am addressing here, but also for anyone interested in the history of the Eastern Churches. A Deacon of Aleppo, Sophronius was ordained priest in March 1741, he became the secretary of Patriarch Sylvester, and then, in November, a Bishop of Acre35. Sophronius refused the Antiochian See, but he accepted in 1771 to be elected Patriarch of Jerusalem. He occupied the see until 24 December 1774, when he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople, named Sophronius II. From this position, he was being called to solve the conflicts that emerged in the Church of Antioch, as reflected in the correspondence discussed here. In a letter dated 5 October 1777, the answer to a letter addressed to his old friend Mūsā Ṭrābulsī, Sophronius promises to inform the Holy Synod about the Antiochian Christians’ discontent with their Patriarch, Daniel of Chios, and to support their point of view. However, his endeavours did not have the expected outcome36. Born in the Arab-Turkish milieu north of Aleppo37, Sophronius knew Arabic and Turkish since childhood, and, due to the education he had received in his Orthodox family, he also knew Modern Greek, but he had a fervent desire to learn Old Greek. With this aim in mind he decided to go to Constantinople, as he was writing to Patriarch Sylvester on 30 January 1732: “Pray God for me, so that He helps me acquire the knowledge of Greek.” Among the hierarchs of the Church of Antioch there were many Greeks born in Constantinople, Chios or Cyprus38; in Levantine ecclesiastic circles, the Greek language was still, in the first half of the 17th century, the language of culture and communication. To learn Old Greek was one of the purposes of the Levantines who left for Constantinople, and later for Bucharest and Iași, aiming to take courses at the Princely Academies (in Bucharest after 1694, in Iași after 1707). The Eastern hierarchs, and among them the Patriarch of Jerusalem Chrysanthos Notaras (1707–1731), learned, taught or composed the curricula of these high colleges, 35 For his life and works see, among other sources, Nasrallah – Haddad, op. cit., p. 95–99; R. Haddad, “La Correspondance”, p. 260–269. 36 R. Haddad, op. cit., p. 269, explains this by the autonomy that the Eastern Patriarchates enjoyed at the time in relation to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. 37 Kilis (Ar. Killiz) is located on the border between Syria and Turkey, close to Gaziantep and Antakya. 38 V. Carsten-Michael Walbiner, “Bishops and Metropolitans of the Antiochian Patriarchate in the 17th century: their relation with the Muslim authorities, their cultural activities and their ethnical background”, ARAM, vol. 9–10, 1997–1998, [1998], p. 577–587; idem, “The relations between the Greek Orthodox of Syria and Cyprus in the 17th and 18th centuries”, Chronos. Revue d’Histoire de l’Université de Balamand, 16, 2007, p. 113–128.
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which soon became famous and well sought after39. In 1704, Patriarch Dositheos II Notaras, eager to improve the knowledge of Holy Land clergy and common people, founded, with money granted by the princes of the Romanian lands born in the Fanar neighbourhood of Istanbul and from some wealthy people there, several schools in Jerusalem, Ramla, Kerak and other cities (including Gaza). These schools offered Greek and Arabic courses based on a curriculum devised by Patriarch Dositheos. On 5 January 1735 Sophronius requested Nectarius, the Metropolitan of Tripoli, to take care of the works that he had left in his care, his translations from Greek to Arabic, “lest they are lost, and I need to translate them a second time” (fol. 7v). In August 174740 Sophronius, who was Bishop of Acre at the time, wrote to Mūsā that he wished he had the time and leisure to translate a book of Orthodox apologetics (Fī l-mahāmāt ‘ani l-’īmān al-mustaqīm), which he would then give to his Holiness the Patriarch [Sylvester] for the new printing press that he had recently founded. He had heard about it from their common friend Hağğ Mīhā’īl Ṭūmā, the Patriarch’s secretary, who praised Mūsā highly for his exemplary service to the Antiochian Apostolic See, which, in his words, saved the Metropolitan vicar of Damascus half the trouble. In the second quarter of the 18th century, the Antiochian hierarchs’ preoccupation to counter the Catholics’ theses was manifested through the translation of several polemical works from Greek into Arabic and their aspiration to print these new versions. A letter dated April 1740 refers to Sophronius’s efforts to translate soulenriching books and to his joint work with Elias Fahr of Tripoli. Elias Fahr (Iliyās Ibn Fahr aṭ-Ṭrābulsī, d. 1758) had worked with Athanasius Dabbās too, translating together the treatise At-tiryāq aš-šāfī min samm alFīlādelfī, “The Curing Antidote to the Poison of the [Archbishop of] Philadelphia”, a commentary against the first section of the trilogy Ekthesis of Gabriel Severus, who had discussed the chief diverging points between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Latin Church41. Elias then revised the Arabic translation made in 1732– 1733 by Sophronius, Bishop of Kilis, of Patriarch Nectarius’s work Qaā al-aqq wa-naql a-idq (The Rule of Justice and the Diffusion of Truth), subsequently printed in Iași, in 1746. The Greek original, Peri tīs arhīs tou papa antirrīsis... (“Discourse against the Pope’s Primacy...”) had been printed by Patriarch Dositheos II of Jerusalem in July 1682 at the Cetățuia Monastery in Iași. In the Foreword to the 1746 book Sylvester asserts (maybe for his protection) that the 39
For the aspiration of the Arab hierarchs to bring the Middle Eastern Christian communities closer to the Greek culture, whose influence was still significant in the Levant in the 17th century, see Constantin A. Panchenko, Arab Orthodox Christians under the Ottomans: 1516–1831, translation from Russian by Brittany Pheiffer Noble and Samuel Noble, Jordanville, New York, 2016, p. 410 sqq. 40 Letter addressed by Bishop Sophronius to Mūsā on 11 August 1747 (fol. 44 r–v). 41 Bernard Heyberger, Les chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique (Syrie, Liban, Palestine, XVIe–XVIIIe s.), Rome, 1994, p. 476; Nasrallah – Haddad, op. cit., p. 115–116.
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Arabic version was done by request of Ioan Mavrocordat, the Prince of Moldavia. Having revised the Arabic version by Sophronius before going to print, and very proud of the outcome, Elias considered himself like the real translator. He also states that he translated another of Patriarch Nectarius’s works, the previouslymentioned Kitāb ğālā’ al-’abṣār min ġiša’ al-’akdār (“The Book Meant to Clear One’s Sight of the Sludge of Turmoil”), another refutation of the Pope’s primacy. Writing to Yūsef in spring 1740, soon after he finished working on Qaā al-aqq, Elias Fahr asked if this text would not be helpful in Aleppo, as a weapon for the polemic clash, more intense at the time. On 27 July 1740 Yūsef Mark wrote to Mūsā that he is working on two copies of this translation, one for Elias Fahr and one for himself. The conflict was so severe that Greek Orthodox scholars were afraid of becoming a laughing-stock in case the copies of the Arabic versions of Greek works were found to be imperfect. On 29 June 1740, Yūsef Mark writes to his friend Elias Fahr that the above-mentioned Arabic version of Patriarch Nektarius’s work against the Pope’s primacy, Kitāb ğālā’ al-’abṣār min ġiša’ al-’akdār, was too important to be left in the pupils’ care, so he intended to copy it personally. Elias Fahr wrote to his nephew Mūsā Ṭrābulsī42 that their pupils made a lot of orthographic mistakes, “for they are completely ignorant, and they even ignore the extent of their ignorance”43; therefore, Mūsā should follow them closely when they copy such texts. Elias offers examples of mistakes that pupils usually made, a true witness to the defective education of the young Syrians of the time, who could speak the local language (Aleppo or Damascus colloquial speech), but were less proficient in literary Arabic and its Classical writing rules. Elias specifically mentions ‘Abdallah Zāher, the Greek Catholic scholar and Arabic-books printer trained in Athanasius Dabbās’s workshop (d. 1748), who “was perfectly knowledgeable in the rules of Arabic grammar, and therefore he would laugh at them [i.e., at these mistakes].” Yūsef Mark writes to Mūsā44 that he had worked for a month and a half (probably during his stay at the St Spyridon Monastery in Bucharest) on an epistle in support of a work by Sophronius of Kilis that had been criticized by a Catholic of Aleppo. He also states that he was afraid of the enmity of the Latin believers in Aleppo, which made him hide his paternity of certain works where he was defending Orthodoxy. In 1743, as a Bishop of Acre, Sophronius addressed two letters to Patriarch Sylvester in which, after many words of praise and admiration, he asks him to reach an agreement with the Patriarchs of 42 This is the last letter in the collection (fol. 49r), undated, but written most likely in June 1740. It begins with the phrase: ’Ilā ḥaḍrati l-waladi l-‘azīz aš-šammās Mūsā, “to my beloved son, the most honourable Deacon Mūsā”. 43 Litt.: Li-’anna-hum ğuhhāl wa-ğahlu-hum murakkab, ’ayy ’inna-hum ğāhilūna ğahla-hum. This is an undated letter on fol. 48r–v. 44 This is a letter copied on fol. 39v–40r, introduction missing. It was presumably written after 1750, when Yūsef was no longer in Bucharest.
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Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Constantinople so that they form a common front against “God’s enemies”, “the despicable faction of the Pope’s servants”, i.e., the Jesuits who preached the Union in the Arab Orthodox communities. Thus, the wide picture of inter-confessional conflict, equally familiar to the Romanians at the time, is clearly visible in the letters exchanged by higher and lower servants of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. After Patriarch Sylvester returned to Syria in 1749 there is no clear trace of Arabic printing in the Romanian Principalities anymore. It is certain, though, that the Patriarch kept printing in Arabic after 1747, and most definitely in Beirut. I mentioned in my book published in 201645 an Arabic Psalter printed in Beirut in 1752, with no copies mentioned in public catalogues (as far as I knew). I have recently located a copy of this book at the Library of the University of Uppsala (Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek)46. In the above-discussed letters of Ms. nr. 9/22 there is a hiatus of several years. Then follow letters from Yūsef Mark to Mūsā Ṭrābulsī, sent from Beirut in 1754, around Pentecost, and one dated 1758, not mentioning the place of dispatch. We know from other sources that Yūsef returned to Syria in 1750. He soon moved to Beirut, where he ran a newly-founded printing press and he opened a school of Arabic and theological studies47. In a church chronicle of Beirut, Yūsef is called “the book-loving teacher”, “the first among priests, the light of theological science, and the glory of Arab writers.”48 A learned šayh of Beirut, Yūsef Nīqūlā al-Ğebeylī, also called Abū Askar (d. 1787)49, who was a trustee of the local Greek Orthodox Church, installed in 1750 a press in a hall of the St George Monastery, where the Greek Orthodox Bishopric of Beirut and the eparchy counsel resided50. Fr Augustin Maqṣūd reported in a letter 45
Tipar pentru creștinii arabi. Antim Ivireanul, Atanasie Dabbās și Silvestru al Antiohiei, op. cit. I am grateful to Geoffrey Roper for indicating to me the Library catalogue entry on a book printed in Beirut, which I found to be this Psalter, of 1752. 47 A mention should be made of the fact that the first press in Lebanon to print books in the Arabic language and in Arabic script (for in Quzhayya an Arabic Psalter had been printed in 1610 in Syriac script) was the one founded at the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Šuweyr by ʻAbdallāh Zāher, Dabbās’s apprentice, who later became a zealous collaborator of the Jesuit missionaries in Lebanon. The press belonged to the Greek Catholic community of this monastery; Arabic Christian texts promoted by the Latin Church were printed here beginning with 1734. 48 See “Iz beirutskoi tserkovnoi letopisi XVI–XVIII vv.”, Drevnosti Vostochniya, 3, 1907, no. 1, p. 88; Nasrallah – Haddad, loc. cit.; Panchenko, op. cit., p. 472. 49 J. Nasrallah, L’Imprimerie au Liban, Beirut – Harissa, 1949, p. 46. 50 Louis Cheikho, “Tārīh fann aṭ-ṭibā‘a fī l-Mašriq”, Al-Machriq, III, 1900, p. 501–502; Carsten Walbiner, “The Christians of Bilād al-Shām (Syria): Pioneers of Book-Printing in the Arab World”, in Klaus Kreiser (ed.), The Beginnings of Printing in the Near and Middle East: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Wiesbaden, 2001, p. 12; Anuwān Qayar Dabbās and Nahla Raššū, Tārīh al-ṭibā‘at al-‘arabiyya fī 46
l-Mašriq. Al-Bariyark Atanāsīyūs at-tālit Dabbās, 1685–1724, Beirut, 2008, p. 126–129. The entry on Maṭbaʻa of Encyclopaedia of Islam – 2, signed by G. Oman, G. Alpay Kut, W. Floor, and G. W. Shaw, does not even mention this press.
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addressed to the Patriarch Maximos Maẓlūm in 184051 that he had seen in Beirut two books printed in 175152: a Psalter and a Book of Hours. Other sources mention a second edition of the Psalter, in 175353, and a Book of the Divine Liturgies54. The Uppsala Psalter is an in-80-format book of 400 p. and an unnumbered engraving inserted before page 1. The Arabic title recorded in the catalogue goes: Brief Book on the Christian teaching; The Book of the Divine Psalms inspired by the Holy Ghost, speaking through David the Prophet and the King; concluded in ten chants. It was catalogued under the name of ‘Abd Allah Ibn al-Faḍl al-Anṭākī (“the Antiochian”), the illustrious scholar and translator active in the 11 th century (d. after 1052)55, who also prepared the first Arabic version of the Book of Psalms. The book of Uppsala is, by all appearances, a re-edition of the Psalter printed by Athanasius Dabbās in Aleppo in 1706, which enjoyed a large circulation in the Levant56. The pages have 15 lines each, enclosed in a double frame, with a catch-word showing on the verso page, below, on the left. The text is printed in black ink, with red ink for titles; ornamental elements appear inside the text: stars, friezes, vines, vignettes, etc. The first page, numbered with 1, is a testimony to the teaching function of the Psalter in Arab Christian communities: this was a handbook and an exercise-book for learning the Arabic language and script (Fig. 2). The first three lines are filled with the Arabic alphabet in the standard order of letters, while lines 4 and 5 give the alphabet in an unusual arrangement: two by two letters in one direction, until the middle of the alphabet, and then the other half of it, similarly arranged. This The letter was published by Fr Athanāsiyūs āğğ in Ar-Rahbāniyya l-Bāsīliyya š-Šuwayriyya fī tārīh al-Kanīsa wa-l-bilād, vol. I, Ğuniyya, 1973, p. 549–550. 52 He also mentioned that, in order to print anti-Latin works, Patriarch Sylvester had transferred the printing press of Aleppo to Beirut, but this information is not confirmed by any other sources. See more details in I. Feodorov, “Beginnings of Arabic Printing in Ottoman Syria (1706–1711)”, p. 248–249. 53 J. Nasrallah, op. cit., p. 46. 54 Dr Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, who travelled to Syria and Palestine in 1803-1808, was the first to mention this Book of the Divine Liturgies, and the information provided by him was repeated by Chr. Fr. von Schnurrer in his Bibliotheca Arabica (Halae, 1811), p. 383–384, then, citing Schnurrer, by Pierre Deschamps, Dictionnaire de géographie ancienne et moderne à l’usage du libraire et de l’amateur de livres, Paris, 1870, p. 1182–1183, and by J. Nasrallah, in L’Imprimerie au Liban, loc. cit. The information is always scarce, since only Seetzen actually saw the book. 55 It is somewhat unexpected for the researcher of Arabic printing in the 18th century to find a book placed under the name of an 11th century translator. Nevertheless, ‘Abd Allah Ibn al-Faḍl’s version is precisely the one that was printed uninterruptedly until late in the 19th century, its last edition being probably that of 1888, in the Franciscan press of Jerusalem. See C. Charon, Le Rite byzantin dans les Patriarcats melkites, Alexandrie – Antioche – Jérusalem, Rome, 1908, p. 132; G. Graf, GCAL, I, 1944, p. 116–119; J. Nasrallah, HMLEM, III.1, 1983, p. 217. 56 One copy is preserved at the Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. Another is at the Institute for Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, and one at the National Library of Russia of the same city. Both of them have several missing pages. Another copy was seen by Virgil Cândea in the library of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Damascus. Other copies are present in Middle Eastern collections, but not all catalogues are available in printed form. 51
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was probably a method for pupils to exercise the correct order of the Arabic alphabet. Lines 6 to 13 comprise: the Trisagion or Angelic Chant; the Orthodox Evening prayer57; the invocation “God have mercy on us”, three times; “Glory to God, and so on”. On the last line, the prayer “Our Father Who Art in Heaven” starts, and it continues on page 2. Then between two ornamental vignettes on page 2 we see: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”. Below, in red ink, is the title: “Brief teaching on the Christian faith”, and then, in black ink: “On the Christian’s way and the sign of the Holy Cross.” From line 9 on there are questions and answers introduced by letters printed in red ink: s for su’āl, „question”, followed by ğ for ğawāb, „answer”. The first question is: „Are you a Christian?” and the answer is: „Yes, glory to the Holy God”. Then the chain of questions and answers goes on, as customary in a Christian Orthodox catechism: “What is the meaning of being a Christian?” – “A Christian is the person who confesses the faith in Jesus Christ and His Law58.” There are 45 questions followed by answers – some brief, some 1–3 pages long. At the end there is a vignette that completes the final page of the text, 26, erroneously printed 25. Placing this Catechism as an introduction to the Book of Psalms confirms the educational purpose of the book; it also goes to show that Patriarch Sylvester, who supervised the printing of this book, followed an East European model: in the Romanian Principalities59, Ukraine, and Russia the Orthodox catechism was used as a text-book in church schools60. The library of the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in Damascus preserves a miscellany, Ms. nr. 22161, where the first text is a Teaching of the Orthodox Christian Faith, Translated from Greek into Arabic by Sophronius of 57
“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, both now and ever and to the ages of ages, Amen! All-Holy Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, be merciful on our sins. Master, forgive our transgressions. Holy One, visit us and heal our infirmities, for Your name’s sake.” 58 Litt., Ar. šarī‘a. 59 Between 1508 and 1830, 96 editions of the Psalter were printed in the Romanian Principalities, cf. Doru Bădără, “O ediție necunoscută a Psaltirii în versuri a lui Dosoftei”, Revista de istorie, 41, 1988, no. 3, p. 282. 60 There is enough proof, I think, to support the editors’ wish to distribute widely, in Lebanon and Syria, the printed form of the Psalter specifically as a means of heightening the level of education of the clergy as well as the common people. This is somewhat contrary to the opinion expressed by Carsten Walbiner about the ‘products’ of the Beirut press (and a second Lebanese press in Mār Mūsā, Duwwār, where books in Syriac types were printed later): “Since their content was exclusively religious, the books seldom reached readers living outside of the religious communities that had produced them and thus could do little to raise the general level of knowledge.” (cf. C. Walbiner, “The Christians of Bilād al-Shām...”, p. 12). 61 This miscellany is described in Al-Matt al-‘arabiyya fī maktabat Bariyarkiyyat Anākiyya wa-Sā’ir al-Mašriq li-r-Rm al-‘Uruks (“ׅCatalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East”), Beirut, 1988, p. 38. Its third section is a foreword to the Book of Psalms composed by ‘Abd Allah Ibn al-Faḍl.
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Kilis, in three parts that comprise 128 questions and their answers altogether. As regards the questions that also occur in the Uppsala Psalter, Sophronius’s version is similar to the one printed there. A work of the same content had circulated in manuscript form in Lebanon and Syria at the end of the previous century62. Christodulos, the Bishop of Gaza and Ramla63, prepared in 1675 the first Arabic translation of the Greek version of Peter Movilă’s Orthodox Confession64. An Arabic-speaking hierarch of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Christodulos translated several Greek theological works, including the book of Meletie Sirigos against the Calvinists, Orthodoxos antirhissis kata ton calvinikon kefalaion... (printed in Bucharest in 1690 by Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem65). His version has the title: Kitāb i’tirāf ar-raiyy al-mustaqīm, “The Book of the Confession of the Orthodox Faith”, and it is made up of three parts, on Faith, Hope, and Love.66 The author of the Greek text is called Mūgīlās. The Arabic version comprises a foreword reporting on the approval of the text in Iași and Constantinople, a note composed by the translator, an opening word by Patriarch Nectarius of Jerusalem that he had written in 1662 in Constantinople, and the Arabic translation of the approval issued by the Holy Synod on 11 March 1643, signed by the Eastern Patriarchs. This document was also signed by Macarius III Ibn al-Za‘īm, the Patriarch of Antioch at the time. Sophronius of Kilis may have used Christodulos’s Arabic version too, leaving aside the foreword and abridging the text of the Confession. A comparison between the two Arabic versions could result in a record of common elements. The title page of the Psalter (Fig. 3) is identical to the one of Dabbās’s version of 1706: Kitāb az-Zabūr aš-Šarīf al-manūq bi-hi min ar-Rū al-Quds alā fam an-Nabiyy wa-l-Malik Dāwūd wa-iddatu-hu mi’at wa-hamsūna mazmūran, “The Holy Book of the Psalms inspired by the Holy Ghost, speaking through the mouth of David the Prophet and King, and their number is one hundred and fifty”. Following this, the title mentions the ten chants that conclude the book and the year 1751 of the Christian era, “during the time of His Holiness Father Kiryu Kir 62
This text is preserved at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus in Ms. 188, a copy of the 19 century, of 99 folios r/v, cf. Al-Matt al-‘arabiyya fī maktabat Bariyarkiyyat Anākiyya…, p. 32. In 1905 it was in the possession of Gregory, the Metropolitan of Tripoli, and then it reached the collection of Patriarch Gregory IV of Antioch (seal of 1906). The Ukrainian diplomat and Orientalist Yuriy Kochubey, who obtained a copy of this manuscript, described it in his study “Pour une histoire des contacts entre l’Orient Orthodoxe et l’Ukraine”, in Europe in Arabic Sources: the Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, Proceedings of the International Conference “In the eyes of the Orient: Europe in Arabic Sources (Kyiv, 22–23 September 2015)”, eds. Yulia Petrova & Ioana Feodorov, Kiev, 2016, p. 110–112. 63 He seemingly succeeded Paisios Ligaridis on this See. 64 J. Nasrallah, HMLEM, IV/1, 1979, p. 198–199. 65 In Modern Greek, a second version, done by the author himself; see Nasrallah, loc. cit. 66 The text was revised by the priest (qass) Leontius, a nephew of the Bishop of Ḥamā, who was also going to become a Bishop of that city in 1733. th
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Sylvester, the blessed and inestimable Patriarch of Antioch, under the care of his honourable and revered vicar, šayh Yūnes67 Nīqūlā.” The text comprises the 150 canonical Psalms and Psalm 151, plus twenty kathisma and the ten chants (taṣābī) traditionally added at the end. Deacon Abdallāh Ibn al-Fal followed the Septuagint version in his translation, while the kathisma were revised by Athanasius Dabbās for his Aleppo edition68. The foreword placed after the title page, starting with page 2, contains on the first page some praises to God, ending in brief prayers. Pages 3 to 5 contain a text attributed to Sophronius of Acre, where details about the coming into being of this book are provided, step by step: “The humble Sophronius, Metropolitan of Acre, stated the following: ‘When the honourable Yūsef Mark of Tripoli asked my advice on the Book of Psalms inspired by the Holy Ghost, translated from Greek into Arabic a long time ago by the late deacon Abdallāh Ibn al-Fal, having surveyed the said book I noticed that it contained errors that occurred later because of copyists, for they did not know the meaning of certain words that resemble each other when they are hand-written and then copied, but vary in their meaning and their correct and precise understanding. Thus, [in the Arabic version] the desired meaning can turn out differently than the original one in the Greek form, such as it was composed or written in the text. And even if certain predecessors of ours69 corrected some of the mistakes by comparing the text with the Greek one, others remained uncorrected, as they were not wellversed in Classical Arabic writing. [...] Therefore, I started carefully to correct the text in order to make it match the old original, as much as I was able, and this under the supervision of Deacon Elias Fahr, the secretary [logotheti] of the Antiochian Apostolic See; I preserved the phrases and words that people used years and decades ago, i.e., the way they were written in the old copies. [...] This Arabic version is similar to the Greek original, after the revision of the Arabic texts and phrases, word for word. I have discarded whatever had been added and I restored whatever was missing from it.” Indeed, the text of the 1752 Psalter differs from the one printed by Dabbās. The foreword is a different one than that composed by Abdallāh Ibn al-Fal, and the one in the Aleppo edition. In that edition we see the title: “The Ninth Chant, to the Virgin Mary Theotokos (li-s-Sayyidat at-Iāwuṭūkus)”, while in 1752 (p. 361) it goes: “The Ninth Chant, to the Lady, Mother of God” (li-s-Sayyidat Wālidat Allāh). This alteration could have occurred because of the new editor’s wish to “Arabicize” the text, leaving aside the Greek loan words used by Arab Christians in the past, which were not comprehensible anymore – to the common reader, at least. 67
This is probably Yūsef Nīqūlā, the above-mentioned trustee of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Beirut, founder of the press at the St George Monastery. 68 J. Nasrallah, op. cit., p. 146. 69 This is probably an allusion to Athanasius Dabbās.
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Therefore, while revising the Psalter for a new edition, he had in mind not only the clergy but also the common people. The Psalms start on page 4070, with the first title inside a frame made of vignettes. The number of the Psalm71 and its title are printed in red ink, as well as the words Li-s-Sayyida, „To the Holy Lady”, within the kathisma. A prayer to the Mother of God always follows these words. At the end of certain Psalms is present the word Doksa, “Glory”, in red ink. After Psalm 150 the twentieth kathisma is given, then Psalm 151, with the title: “Psalm outside the number sequence, uttered by David when he fought and defeated Goliath.” Starting with page 335 the ten chants follow: two of Prophet Moses, one of Prophet Samuel’s mother, then those of Prophets Avvakum, Isaiah, Jonas, of the Three Youngsters, the Holy Mother of God, and Zachariah. From page 364 to page 367 there is a Final Word enclosing explanations on: the origin of the Psalms, their translation from Hebrew to Greek, then the translation of the other included texts from Greek, with citations from the Old Testament indicated in red ink (“Jacob, 3”, “Jeremiah, 13”, etc.) placed vertically outside the text frame. Finally, some details are provided regarding the way the Greek to Arabic translation was done. This text, absent from the Aleppo edition, is probably due to the editor, Yūsef Mark, and it was written especially for the new edition of Beirut. The text ends in two phrases, the first one in red ink: “Glory to God the One”, the second in black ink: “Completed on 21 of the month of May, the year 1752 of the Christian era.” After printing the Book of Psalms in 1706, Dabbās continued to work on the revision of the text. There is a statement in the Foreword of Ms. Cambridge 1041 (Add. 257), a Psalter in Greek and Arabic with the text placed on two columns, that this is a revised version of the Aleppo Psalter done by Athanasius Dabbās together with the Orthodox priest Salomon Negri (Suleymān al-ʼAswad), who was his disciple. This version would subsequently be published in 1725 in London, where Negri was working at the time. He had followed the classes of the Jesuits’ school in Aleppo, and they convinced him to go to Paris, hoping that he would embrace the Latin creed there72. After courses taken at the Sorbonne, he was invited by the Anglican Church Missionary Society in London to revise, after the Greek canonical texts, the Book of Psalms and the Gospels of Aleppo (1706), in view of a republication (which actually happened: the Book of Psalms in 1725 and the Gospels in 1727)73. In the Cambridge manuscript, the Psalms are followed by three Greek 70
But the numbering restarts from page 1. This number is sometimes expressed both with letters and figures. 72 J. Balagna, L’Imprimerie arabe en Occident, p. 103–104. 73 In London he also contributed to the Arabic text of a Brief History of Christianity written from a Protestant perspective, necessary for the Anglican missionaries who were sent to the Middle and the Far East. Negri worked on the preparation for printing of the Arabic text of the Bible, later completed by Meletius Karma. See G. Graf, GCAL, IV, 1951, p. 279; J. Nasrallah, HMLEM, IV/1, p. 85. 71
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texts enclosing Teachings on the Orthodox Faith: only the first one is translated into Arabic and copied in the same manuscript. It is possible that the text on the Christian faith printed in the Beirut Psalter of 1752 is based on this one precisely. The origin of the printing tools used in Beirut has remained unknown. The most plausible source is the incipient Arabic printing press of the St Spyridon Monastery in Bucharest, where Yūsef Mark supervised the cutting and casting of Arabic types that he could have taken to Syria, and then to Beirut. Here, new sets of types could be cut on their model, as it happened before in Aleppo, in 1705– 1706, where Antim the Iberian’s Arabic types and other typographic elements were taken as models for new ones, created by Dabbās’s local apprentices. It has been claimed that the 1752 Psalter was printed in Bucharest74. The great scholar Sylvestre de Sacy, who in 1811 was in charge of the French Court printing press75, wrote on 30 July 181176 to Théodore Ledoulx, the vice-consul of France in Bucharest, asking him to do some research and write back to him about the books that were printed there by Athanasius Dabbās and Sylvester of Antioch, because he had learned a little bit from the French consul in Aleppo, who had sent him a Psalter printed by Sylvester. De Sacy, who had little idea of what was going on in the Romanian Principalities, could not fathom why a Patriarch of the Antiochian Church would print here Arabic books. He expressed his opinion in these terms: “Without any doubt, in Moldavia and Wallachia there is a large enough number of Christians who speak Arabic and do not use Greek in their church services at all, since the Patriarch considered it necessary to print books entirely in Arabic for their enlightenment and their children’s education.” Ledoulx answered to him in a letter dated 12 February 1812 that he had asked the Metropolitan of the country, Ignatius (“the Greek”77), who provided him with the following explanations: “In Wallachia there never was an Arabic press financed by the administration for the local citizens, who completely ignore this language, to such an extent that not one individual would be found in all of Wallachia who could understand one [Arabic] word. There are in the country several monasteries that depend on the Patriarchs of Antioch. These monasteries are sometimes visited by the said Patriarchs. The one of Antioch called Sylvester was in Wallachia and stayed for a 74
See, among others, Allen Kent, Harold Lancour, and Jay E. Daily (eds.), William Z. Nasri (assistant ed.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, vol. 24, New York – Basel, 1978, p. 57. 75 The French vice-consul in Bucharest, Théodore Ledoulx, addresses him thus: „À M-r Silvestre de Sacy, membre du Corps legislatif, de l’Institut [de France] et de la Légion d’Honneur à Paris.” 76 This correspondence was still preserved in 1936 in Paris, in the package no. 2377 of archival documents at Institut de France, where they were found by T. Holban, who published some commented fragments in “Tipografii și cărți armenești [corr., arabe] în Țările Românești”, Arhiva. Revistă de istorie, filologie și cultură românească. Organul Societății Istorico-Filologice din Iași, 43, 1936, p. 111–115. 77 Elected on 15 January 1810, installed on 5 May, Ignatius the Greek occupied the See until 10 August 1812. He reformed the Princely Academy of Bucharest during the rule of Prince Ioan Gheorghe Caragea, requesting the assitance of scholars such as Grigore Brâncoveanu.
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while at one of the monasteries under his control. We suppose that to alleviate the dire shortage of Holy Books in the Levant, and to do something that would have undoubtedly brought him a lot of money78, he brought Arabic types from Dadone or Mome (sic!) and he founded in his monastery a press, at his own expense. The books printed by this press would have been distributed across the Levant, according to the Patriarch’s wish. The Psalter that you speak of must be among these books. [...] The monastery where Patriarch Sylvester installed his press is not in Bucharest, but 20 miles from here.” Of this doubtful information, a theory was born that the press at the Snagov Monastery had been reopened and that Arabic books were printed again there, including this Psalter. Undoubtedly, Ledoulx was referring to the St Spyridon Monastery of Bucharest, which had been entrusted to the Church of Antioch, as a metokion, so it was “Sylvester’s monastery”, unlike that of Snagov. According to the inscription on the icon of St Spyridon mentioned above, the establishment was “situated to the East of the river that crosses the city [i.e., Dâmbovița], and it is next to the bridge”, so it could be considered to lie outside the city. The church was situated, since its reconstruction and until the end of the 19th century, on the left bank, therefore South of the river Dâmbovița; however, the river altered its course in time, especially due to the works required for the improvement of its flow, and thus, since around 1880 the church lies on its right bank.79 J. Th. Zenker wrote about the Beirut Psalter, but he probably saw only the title page, since he gives 1751 as the year of completion. Schnurrer recorded a copy of this Psalter, which seemingly belonged to Émile Picot80. He describes it as an in-80, XXX + 367 p., matching the Uppsala copy. Only the year of publication is wrong – 1751, just like Zenker had mentioned81. On the other hand, he gives on p. 515a)–517a) of his Addenda an excerpt of the title page of a different Psalter, seemingly printed at Bucharest in 1747, on which no information exists. It is possible that in Bucharest only the title page of the Arabic Psalter was typeset, without continuing with the printing of the book, which was subsequently printed in Beirut in its entirety, with the correct year mentioned on the final page. The aspect that I would like to address next is the continuity of the circulation of Antim the Iberian’s typographic material in the Arab Christian communities of the East Mediterranean lands82. 78 This is Ledoulx’s interpretation: it is highly improbable that the assertion was made by Metropolitan Ignatius. 79 George D. Florescu, Din vechiul București. Biserici, curți boierești și hanuri între anii 1790–1791 după două planuri inedite, Bucharest, 1935, p. 33; Gh. Vasilescu, op. cit., p. 4. 80 Schnurrer, Bibliotheca Arabica, p. 383, nr. 354, p. 515a)-517a) (Addenda), and p. 522. This could be the copy that Silvestre de Sacy had received from Aleppo and he inquired about at Bucharest. See Picot, “Notice biographique et bibliographique sur l’imprimeur Anthime d’Ivir, Métropolitain de Valachie”, în Nouveaux mélanges orientaux, Paris, 1886, p. 544. 81 The information was repeated by other historians of early printing. In Bucharest, Dan Simonescu used, in order to describe this hypothetical book, the data provided by Zenker. 82 For the re-use of matrices and dies from Antim’s printing press in Aleppo see I. Feodorov, “Beginnings of Arabic Printing in Ottoman Syria (1706–1711)”, p. 245 sqq. (and the reproductions).
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Before page 1 of the Beirut Psalter there is an engraving of the Deisis icon, derived from one that was created in Antim the Iberian’s printing press, but clumsily copied and then printed as a mirror image (Fig. 4). The original was printed in 1701 in the Greek and Arabic Book of the Divine Liturgies of Snagov83 (Fig. 5). It was included afterward in several other books printed in Antim’s workshops: – Ceasoslov slavonesc (“Slavonic Book of Hours”), Bucharest, 1703; – Învățătură pe scurt pentru taina pocăinții (“Brief Teachings Concerning the Mystery of Repentance”), 1705. – Învățătură besericească (“Church Teachings”), Târgoviște, 1710; – Ceasoslov (“Book of Hours”), Târgoviște, 171584. The mould was cut by a beginner’s hand, which resulted in a clumsy appearance of the new image. Moreover, it was set in the wrong position on the page (right way round), leading to a reversal in the position of the two Divine Persons alongside the Christ, i.e., the Mother of God and St John the Baptist. This unusual and non-canonical representation would have been avoided by an experienced East European printer (such as those of Iași and Bucharest). Apparently, the Arab printer was not aware of the fact that when using an image copied from a book the new printing plate that is created should be reversed, or flipped across its horizontal axis (as a mirror-image), in order to obtain a correct printed image, similar to the original. Reversed images are also present in early books printed in Europe, before this skill of reversing images when making printing plates was properly developed. Prior to the first Psalm, on page 28, an engraving of David the Prophet’s icon is printed (Fig. 6), facing in the other direction than customary. The inscription above, “PRO DAVID”, was printed in reverse, probably by wrongly type-setting the page, as I explained earlier. It seems that the printer did not use the mirrorimage technique consistently while type-setting the page.85 The frame of the engraving has a more complicated model than in the first engraving, decorated with the thistle pattern typical of Ukrainian presses – and the Romanian ones that borrowed it. There are some similarities of composition with the icon of David the Prophet and King engraved in Antim’s printing press (Fig. 7)86. In the Aleppo Psalter of 1706 David’s icon, signed by a Greek engraver, follows a different pattern. We do not know for now what example was used for the engraving added to the 1752 Psalter of Beirut, but it was presumably obtained by copying a printed model, in the same technique as the first icon. 83
See the reproduction ibidem, p. 259, Fig. 6, and in Antim Ivireanul, Opera tipografică, edited by Arhim. Policarp Chițulescu (coord.), Doru Bădără, Ion Marin Croitoru, Gabriela Dumitrescu, and Ioana Feodorov, Bucharest, 2016, p. 93. 84 See the reproductions in I. Feodorov, “Beginnings of Arabic printing in Ottoman Syria (1706– 1711)”, p. 260, Fig. 7 (Bucharest, 1703) and Antim Ivireanul, Opera tipografică, p. 115, 133, 158, and 194. 85 Luminița Kövari (Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest) pointed out to me that the inscription below, “IOAN TIP” (perhaps < Rom. tipograf, “printer”), is correctly printed except for one letter, A, which is reversed. 86 See the reproductions in Antim Ivireanul, Opera tipografică, p. 49 and 77.
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Other ornamental elements in the Beirut Psalter are almost identical to those present in Romanian books. It seems impossible for the printing tools that Athanasius Dabbās took from Bucharest to have been preserved and reused in Beirut after four decades. Nevertheless, the common figurative and decorative elements shared by Antim’s books and the Beirut Psalter reflect a direct connection, which is an outcome of the Syrians’ typographic activity in the Romanian Principalities. The third topic that I wish to address here is an unknown book that was brought to my attention by its owner, a Spanish book-collector: an Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God printed in Arabic (Fig. 8). This is a small book, 10.5 × 16 cm, close to an in-160 (i.e., 10 x 17 cm), with no title page and no closing page, printed in black ink, with Arabic types, 15 lines per page, with catchword on every page, below on the left. The binding is made of leather and cardboard, with a triangular clasp, sewn with silk thread, and the spine is decorated with a nice pattern. The Akathist follows the standard Arabic version, a translation, put in writing after many centuries of oral circulation, based on the Greek original attributed to St Romanos the Melodist, a son of Syrian Christianity87. This text was naturally the final part of the Book of Hours printed by Athanasius Dabbās in 1702 at Bucharest, only the one printed individually lacks the Greek references and the titles of the chanted sections. It is likely that the printer did not have Greek types in his workshop or could not combine the Arab text with the Greek one, a technically complicated operation, which Antim succeeded in carrying out flawlessly. Arabic manuscripts of the Akathist are known to exist in Levantine libraries, but no text was known to have been printed separately in the 16th-18th centuries. As a section of the Byzantine Kontakion, it was, and still is, particularly appreciated by the Orthodox and the Greek-Catholics88. As far as we know, the first Arabic Akathist to have been printed as a separate book dates from 1857, in Jerusalem, and the following edition was the one of Beirut, in 1863. To learn what was the press that produced this book I compared the Arabic types with the ones used for books printed in Snagov, Bucharest, Aleppo, Beirut, Istanbul, and several printed earlier, in the 16th century, in Venice. I could not find anywhere the same set of types as in the Akathist. A few of the types look similar to some in the colligate volume holding the works of Nektarius of Jerusalem and Eustratios Argentis that was printed in Iași in 1746 by Patriarch Sylvester. But if this book is one of his printing works, then newly-made types were added to the initial set of Arabic types, possibly worn out. On page 4 of the Arabic Akathist there is an engraving of the Annunciation, also present in several books printed in the Romanian Principalities between 1698 and 1745. The first occurrence seems to be the Romanian Akathist printed by Antim the Iberian in 1698 at Snagov, which is, however, an in-80 format (Fig. 9). 87
He was born in Ḥoms at the end of the 5th century and he died in Constantinople in c. 555–565. See, e.g., Acathiste. Hymne à la Mère de Dieu, French, Arabic, and English versions, eds. Névine Toutounji-Hage Chahine and Leina Bassil-Tanios, Raboueh – Liban, 2013 (with exceptional reproductions of Arab icons). 88
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The engraving was printed again in Romanian workshops89: – Ceaslov slavonesc și românesc, [Bucharest], [1703], printed by Antim. – Ceasoslov, Târgoviște, 1715, printed by Gheorghe Radovici (Fig. 10). – Acatist cătră Prea Sfânta Născătoare..., [Buzău], [1743], printed by Ioan Stoicovici. – Ceasoslov, Râmnic, 1745, printed by Dimitrie Pandovici. – Ceaslov, Râmnic, 1753 (an almost identical replica, signed “Pop. Costandin”). – Ceaslov, Bucharest, 1767. – Ceaslov, Bucharest, 1777. However, it does not appear in the Book of Hours printed by Antim and Athanasius Dabbās in Bucharest in 1702, nor in the Aleppo books of 1706–1711: presumably, it was not brought to Syria by Dabbās. It came, nevertheless, from a Romanian press to which Patriarch Sylvester and his Syrian apprentices had access, in Iași or Bucharest. Another important element is the hierarch’s emblem (coat of arms) on the last page of the book (Fig. 11). Examples of coats of arms used in creating this one could be the models of Kiev, Târgoviște and Bucharest hierarchs, but those of Jerusalem or Constantinople Patriarchs and Bishops were also a possible source. Dr. Doru Bădără noticed that this is a heraldic construction that does not observe the rules of armorial composition, as established by the European art of heraldry. Moreover, the hierarchs’ emblems designed in Eastern Europe show a certain freedom of design. He concluded that this particular emblem had been created in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, following European examples. The emblems of Patriarchs and Bishops appear in the Romanian Principalities in the 17th century, mostly in printed books. Those of Petru Movilă evolved chronologically, taking on several forms, as he was changing his status within the hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. If in the beginning several Polishstyle elements were present, later on the heraldry gained personal touches, proper to the Orthodox world. As Petru Movilă became a mitrofor90 Archimandrite of the Petchersk Lavra Monastery (“Monastery of the Caves”) in Kiev, an Orthodox mitre is printed in the books that he supervised here, instead of the Catholic bishop’s hat. This heraldic composition was also seen on the metal plate placed on his coffin on 2 December 1646, when he was buried in the Church of the Lavra. The cross on the hierarch’s walking-stick and the Orthodox crutch (pateritsa), which replaced the Latin bishop crutch, are elements of Movilă’s emblem after he was elected a Metropolitan of Kiev in 1633. Sorin Iftimi surveyed in detail several printed heraldic arms of Wallachian hierarchs that reflect the influence of Movilă’s successive emblems91: those of Metropolitan Stephen of 89
The following list was drawn for me by Luminița Kövari. In Orthodoxy, a hierarch who has the right to wear the mitre, like a bishop (< Ngr. mitrophóros). 91 See Sorin Iftimi, “Influența lui Petru Movilă, Mitropolitul Kievului, asupra heraldicii eclesiastice din Țările Române”, in Sinodul de la Iași și Sf. Petru Movilă (1642–2002), Iași, 2002, p. 190–199 (with illustrations). 90
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Hungrowallachia92, Metropolitan Varlaam (attributed to him)93, and Antim the Iberian, dated in 171394, when he was Metropolitan of Wallachia. A large part of the printing implements of Moldavia and Wallachia came from the Petchersk Lavra press in Kiev, therefore the matrices, moulds, and dies that were used for Petru Movilă’s emblems95 could have been reused in creating new ones for the Moldavian and the Wallachian hierarchs, after adapting them to the local style and personal preferences96. For a hierarch of the Greek-Orthodox Church of Antioch, in open conflict with the Latin Church around 1740, the Catholic bishop’s hat was not a symbol to include in a Patriarch’s emblem. The Orthodox crutch and the cross are placed in an X shape under the Orthodox mitre. Other decorative elements, such as the lambrequins and the crowned characters, are baroque in style, influenced by the Western or perhaps the Ukrainian heraldic art. In the centre of the emblem we can read „Silvestros”, printed in Greek letters. Beside Sylvester of Chios, no other Patriarch of Antioch is known to have held this name in the 18th century. In the Romanian lands the monogram was included in the bishops’ emblems precisely in the 18th century, when a trend was set. We have, therefore, strong support in thinking that the design of this particular hierarch’s emblem was influenced by examples from East European Orthodox lands. The differences can be accounted for if we keep in mind the particularities of the confessional climate in Ottoman Syria, where Patriarch Sylvester was carrying out his pastoral mission. And since no contacts between this Patriarch and the Orthodox Church of Kiev or Ukrainian printers are documented, we may assert with some certainty that the printer’s workshop where this emblem was designed lay in Moldavia or Wallachia. In all probability, some decorative elements of the Arabic Akathist that are identical to those created by Ukrainian masters also came from Romanian presses. It is the case of the typographic sign in Fig. 8, above and below the Annunciation, a pattern used in various graphic combinations and positions since the first half of the 17th century (see also Fig. 10). It is also present in books printed at the Petchersk Lavra, from where it migrated to Moldavia and Wallachia. Another element is repeated in the frieze on the left page of Fig. 8: the thistle flower or burgeons, common in Ukrainian and Romanian printed books of the 17th–18th 92
One in Sacramentul (Mystirio) printed at Târgoviște in 1651, another in Îndreptarea legii, Târgoviște, 1652, cf. Ion Bianu, Nerva Hodoș, and Dan Simonescu, Bibliografia românească veche, vol. I: 1508–1716, Bucharest, 1903, p. 191. 93 In Cheia înțelesului, Bucharest, 1678. 94 See Dan Cernovodeanu, Știința și arta heraldică în România, Bucharest, 1977, p. 179 and ill. no. CXIV/3. 95 Some of them are still preserved in the outstanding Museum of the Book and Printing at the Petchersk Lavra. 96 Referring to West and Central European heraldry, Sorin Iftimi, op. cit., p. 191, notes that “the heraldic elements, established centuries ago, consisted of symbols that were specific to the Latin Church. Some of these elements were adapted according to the Orthodox symbolism”.
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centuries (Fig. 12). It is also present in the Beirut Psalter of 1752 (see Fig. 6). The third decorative element shared by the Arab Akathist and the one of Antim the Iberian (1698) is a frieze made up of a sequence of oval and round shapes. The complex 4-rays star, or small cross (see Fig. 13), is absent from the books printed in the Romanian Principalities, but we find it in the Beirut Psalter of 1752 (see Fig. 2). This shape could have been created by Yūsef Mark and his team, either in Bucharest or in Beirut. In any case, the Arabic Akathist and the Beirut Psalter share several decorative elements. This makes it highly probable that they were printed by the same team, or in the same printing press. Another clue that can help find the press where the Akathist was produced is the watermark of the paper. It is barely visible, difficult to reconstruct, since to obtain an in-160 format the paper folio needed to be folded many times, and thus the contour of the filigree shape was hidden to a large extent. Tudor Tiron, an expert in heraldry, suggested to me that this is a lion rampant. One of the most common watermarks applied to paper produced in Western and Central Europe, it could have travelled to Eastern Europe and even to the Levant, as the same paper was used both for manuscripts and for printing books.97 A lion rampant shape that is quite close to the watermark under scrutiny is recorded in E. Heawood, Watermarks mainly of the 17th and 18th centuries. Monumenta chartae papyraceae historiam illustrantia98. The reference is to a book printed in 173299, which matches the period of Patriarch Sylvester’s printing activities. The subject, though, is vast and requires the expertise of a watermark specialist.100 Some information on the circulation of this book is gleaned from elements added to it in the course of time. A paper stamp stuck on the interior of the back cover indicates that the book belonged to Count Frederick North (no. 122 in the catalogue of his collection), the same person who acquired in Aleppo in 1824 a copy of the manuscript enclosing Paul of Aleppo’s Travels of Patriarch Macarius 97
The website of the International Association of Paper Historians, a body that connects the members of a large community of paper specialists, provides an extensive list of watermark catalogues from all over the world. 98 In t. 1, Hilversum, 1950, p. 19, nr. 12. Vera Tchentsova indicated it to me. 99 F. Petis de la Croix, Istoria del Gran Genghizchan, Venice, 1737, cf. E. Heawood, op. cit., p. 63. 100 I have tentatively surveyed some sources, including the ones referring to paper that circulated in the Romanian Principalities, basically used for manuscripts: Al. Mareș, Filigranele hîrtiei întrebuințate în Țările Române în secolul al XVI-lea (Bucharest, 1987). Nothing close came up. As for the paper that circulated in Central Europe and the Ottoman Empire, several works can prove useful in a future search for this watermark: Asparouh Velkov, St. Andreev, Les Filigranes dans les documents ottomans, Sofia, 1983, 2005; St. Andreev, Les Filigranes dans les documents ottomans. Couronne, Sofia, 2007; A. Zonghi, The Watermarks, Monumenta chartae papyraceae historiam illustrantia, vol. 3, Hilversum, 1953; D. and J. Harlfinger, Wasserzeichen aus Griechischen Handschriften, vol. 1, Berlin, 1974; E. Laucevičius, Popierius Lietuvoje XV–XVIII a., Atlasas, Vilnius, 1967. I am grateful to Vera Tchentsova for the information and bibliographic suggestions that she provided to me.
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III of Antioch, which was later on in the care of Francis Cunningham Belfour, who translated it into English by request of the Oriental Translation Committee101. Frederick North, count of Guilford, the son of the Prime Minister of Great Britain during the war against America, was a member of the House of Lords, where he replaced his brother in 1791. He travelled to Syria, Greece, and the Island of Corfu102, and upon his return he brought to London many manuscripts and books that he had acquired in Oriental bazaars and antiquarians’ shops. Since Frederic North died in 1827, the Arabic Akathist must have been printed before that date; therefore, it could not have come from one of the presses installed in Beirut by the Catholic or Protestant communities, which only started working in the second half of the 19th century. A hand-written note at the end of the book states that it was printed in Wallachia, cf. Schnurrer’s catalogue, no. 266. Actually, as far as Arabic books printed in Wallachia go, Schnurrer only recorded in his Bibliotheca Arabica the Book of the Divine Liturgies printed by Antim the Iberian in Snagov (1701), in Arabic and Greek103. What we can establish for now, on the basis of the information presented above, is that the Arabic Akathist was printed in the 18th century using some typographic implements that were created in Romanian printing presses, or recreated based on Moldavian and Wallachian examples, and that Patriarch Sylvester was involved in this either by ordering the book to be printed, or by paying for it – but most probably both. It is clear, in any case, that Patriarch Sylvester obstinately followed his dream of distributing printed Arabic service books in Ottoman Syria. For this reason, and others, Eustratos Argentis portrayed him as “the second Athanasius” and “a true Apostle”.104 The link between Bucharest and Beirut, suggested, but never proven before, is documented through the recent access to all the above-mentioned exceptional sources105.
[email protected] 101 See Ioana Feodorov, “Chapter 12: Paul of Aleppo”, in The Orthodox Church in the Arab World 700-1700. An Anthology of Sources, editors Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger, Illinois, 2014, p. 252–275. 102 See Ioana Feodorov, Paul din Alep, Jurnal de călătorie în Moldova și Valahia, Bucharest – Brăila, 2014, p. 39. 103 This is recorded on p. 266–272, no. 266. He did not mention the Book of Hours of Bucharest, 1702. 104 Timothy Ware, Eustratios Argenti: a Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule, Oxford, 1964, p. 30, apud H. Çolak, The Orthodox Church, p. 171, n. 529. 105 I wish to express my deep gratitude to all those who helped me obtain the sources discussed here and offered information and suggestions to me: Archim. Policarp Chițulescu, Fr Roger-Youssef Akhrass, Fr Joseph Bali, Fr Ronney el Gemayel, SJ, Antonio Comellas Carbo, Doru Bădără, Geoffrey Roper, Luminița Kövari, Vera Tchentsova, Yulia Petrova, and Tudor Tiron.
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Fig. 1. Fol. 38r of Ms. no. 9/22. Library of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (Ḥoms)
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Fig. 2. Psalter, Beirut, 1752, p. 1. (Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek)
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Fig. 3. Ibidem, title page of the Book of Psalms.
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Fig. 4. Ibidem, Deisis.
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Fig. 5. Deisis in Book of the Divine Liturgies, Snagov, 1701. (Library of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest)
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Fig. 6. David the Prophet and King in the Psalter, Beirut, 1752. (Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek)
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Fig. 7. David in the Greek Psalter, Snagov, 1700. (Library of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest)
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Fig. 8. Arabic Akathist.
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Fig. 9. The Annunciation in the Akathist of Snagov, 1698. (Library of the Holy Synod, Bucharest)
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Fig. 10. Ceasoslov, Târgoviște, 1715. (Library of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest)
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Fig. 12. David in Dosoftei’s Versified Psalter of Uniev, 1673. (Library of the Central University Library, Bucharest)
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New Data on the Early Arabic Printing in the Levant
Fig. 11. Hierarch’s emblem, closing page of the Arabic Akathist.
Fig. 13. Detail, the Psalter, Beirut, 1752.
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